Disclaimer: This review covers the first ten films (eight, plus two specials), referred to in order as 1) Thanatos (Overlooking View), 2) ... and Nothing Heart (A Study in Murder, Part 1), 3) Ever Cry, Never Life (Remaining Sense of Pain), 4) Garan-No-Dou (The Hollow Shrine), 5) Paradox Paradigm (Paradox Spiral), 6) Fairy Tale (Oblivion Recording), 7) ... Not Nothing Heart (A Study in Murder, Part 2), 8) the Garden of Sinners (Epilogue), 9) Recalled Out Summer (Future Gospel), and 10) Recalled Out Summer - Extra Chorus (Future Gospel - Extra Chorus). Still with me? Good.When I was casually hanging out with the local university's anime club in the early 2010's, it became clear that there were two categories of anime fan. One is the casual fan, likely a big fan of one or two specific shows, likely long-running shonen jump shows (at the time, "Naruto," "One Piece," "Bleach" or "Fairy Tail"). They likely hadn't seen much else, wouldn't consider seeing much else, and would be quick to recommend that a group watches some episodes from their favorite show, or write comments to online anime bloggers to include the show in their top ten list. The second category is a more refined viewer, having seen dozens of shows, knowing what the classics are and what the popular current broadcasts are, and in their knowledge would be a little more elitist in their opinions.To quickly tell what category a given fan falls in, you can just ask what their favorite anime is. The refined viewer will give you their top three or five, one of which is almost certain to be "The Garden of Sinners," better known by its Japanese title "Kara No Kyoukai." It's a complex dark fantasy series spread out over eight films, or ten if including its two extra parts, released from 2007 to 2013. If I had to summarize the series with one word, I might chose words like "elitist," "pretentious" and "exclusive," both for the content and the difficulty to actualy being able to see it at all. I'll go in more detail later, but to simply have seen any of "The Garden of Sinners" made you part of a special club that put you beyond that of casual fans. It isn't easy to describe the story of "The Garden of Sinners." You might mention that it is a "Type-Moon" spinoff, the fictional universe that includes "Fate - Stay Night," and "Tsukihime," a stylized world in modern Japan set under a bloody twilight moon with mages, magic eyes and Christian symbolism. But being stand-alone, knowing those series is unnecessary, although it might help understand the concept of magic in this world. Instead, know that there are three main characters: Toko Aozaki, a mage running a detective business, Mikiya Kokuto, a plain but kind young man who works under Toko, and Shiki Ryogi, a emotionally complex woman with a thirst for murder, but who keeps herself under control by working stranger jobs under Toko and with Mikiya as a supportive romantic partner and friend. The types of crimes they investigate typically involves murder or disappearances, often with supernatural causes, such as phantoms, telekinesis or invisible fairies suggesting victims to do bad things. For various reasons, Shiki is the best suited warrior to take on such monsters, one such reason including her "mystic eyes of death perception," where she can see lines on all things that, if traced, cause instant detruction and death to the matter.Type-Moon's work has been adapted to animation before, but had previously been poorly done such that the gothic and dead-serious world building came across as comical. With "The Garden of Sinners," the lead characters are not students attending high school, but adults with real jobs and real relationships. There aren't any sexy shenanigans, even with a female lead as an action star. I felt like "The Garden of Sinners" takes itself, and is audience, seriously, without talking down to us. That is incredibly refreshing. The subject matter is especially dark, covering murder, intent for muder, cannibalism and rape. Not just the act of it, but the characters often discuss the how and why such crimes are committed, a true conversation of minds that makes for a gripping psychological fantasy thiller and mystery. What causes someone to want to kill? Can intent manifest itself in ways that cannot be described by science? One could easily write a thesis of over a hundred pages on any single film of this series and the ideas it presents. Strangely, of all the genres this could be classified as, "romance" might be the most important. Mikiya is a boring male co-lead, but under no circumstance will he give up on Shiki, and their romance grows stronger up to the end, however strange and broken they each are. This might be the most romantic anime I've seen, despite the violence.Not only the story told over a series of films, but said films are not released in chronological order, an extra mental hurdle to get over. Personally, I recommend watching the movies in their released order, as the first film makes a great impression, while providing just enough character development to feel slightly invested into further adventures with the characters. At risk of a diservice, I'd compare the first film to watching a good (but dark) CSI television episode, and in that way I consider it accessible to adult audiences, save that they can stomach the more gory material. I commonly hear films 5) and 7) being the most popular, as they are each the longest (about two hours each, compared to typically just one), and feature a forebodding antagonist that has significant importance against the main characters' lives, arguably being the big bads of the entire series. Personally, I much prefer films 1) and 3), each for having relatively stand-alone stories with compelling and humanistic enemies, and a stronger supernatural force. And as exhillerating as 5) is, I can't find anyone admitting to understand its maze of illusions and magic bluffs, and it ultimately concludes with the simple macguffin that all the films end with: Shiki can cut through anything, be it flesh, bone, time or space. The writing in "The Garden of Sinners" is far above what any anime has attempted, but sometimes it's wordy dialogue and conceptual ideas are unnecessarily complex for the sake of world-building rather than importance to a story. This seems especially noticable when films try to reveal more about the main character's backstory rather than a standalone character. And with the vast majority of the content being dialogue rather than showing or of action, it might be a bit of a slog to watch the 10+ hours, depending on your personal taste. Visually, "The Garden of Sinners" is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. That's strange, since the studio, Ufotable, wasn't known for high-quality animation before this. But somehow they've unlocked the ability to use digital art and 3D models to the fullest, coloring backgrounds and characters with gradients, giving incredible colors and lighting effects. Even the old abandoned skyscrappers look mesmerizing, and pools of blood have never looked so beautiful. Yes, a lot of blood and guts are on display throughout the series, watching isn't for the faint of heart. Visual design and animation are different things, however. While most would confuse the two, I don't think the animation in "The Garden of Sinners" is exceptional. Yes, almost every film has at least one set-piece action scene with incredible choreography and animated movement, but in between, not as much attention is given, simply because the dialogue in those scenes is more important than animation. Actually, it isn't that attention isn't given: there is great detail in subtle character movement during more quiet scenes, but not many frames are used to animate it. It is plenty good enough for a theatrical film, and when paired with the incredible visuals, comes across as exceptional. 
"The Garden of Sinners" has no English dub, but has a great Japanese dub. I rarely rate such a thing so highly, but the actress playing Shiki has incredible emotion behind her when necessary, and I can't imagine anyone else playing the part. The series is also well known for its music, by Yuki Kajiura, whose violin and vocal-choir style has since become one of the most sought-after composers in anime. Both her and Ufotable have come to represent the best anime has to offer for the decade that followed, and even Type-Moon has received a greater respect and interest than it ever had, all because of "The Garden of Sinners." Do keep in mind that the first seven films weren't made for Bluray in mind, so sadly, they appear fuzzy and with faded colors on home video. DVD would be a perfectly fine outlet for them. It isn't until film 8) that the production updated... it's ironic that the most beautiful film takes place entirely in a orange city-lit night sky on a street looking out at the snow.What of films 9) and 10), the two late films not included in any standard set release with the others? They aren't mandatory viewing, but really, I could say that of almost any given movie of the series. It's nice that the production pipeline finally upgraded to a full HD output, but there are less action scenes to take advantage of it, making it look more like a very nice television special rather than a theatrical film. Generally, it was nice to see the characters again, but this also contains the weakest stories, save for one of the short stories contained in film 10). Interestingly, 9) extends an extra 20 minutes to show a scene that takes place a decade after the main series, giving some closure by showing what becomes of the main couple while revealing a new cast, signaling a potential continuation in a new television or film series. There's also a brief scene that takes place before the entire series, giving us both a prologue and epilogue as an afterthought to the film's story. While perhaps overhyped, "The Garden of Sinners" is an incredible masterpiece throughout. Japan knows this. Unfortunately, this has had a bad effect on having the films released outside of its home country, which I will detail next:In 2011, a Bluray box set was released of the first eight movies in Japan. Aniplex of America at the time was a sister company to the original Japanese distributor, and only released a small handful of unknown properties with little success, in part due to premium prices. They decided to release an "imported" version of the Bluray set in the USA, which was the exact Japanese product (only allowable as it already included English subtitles on the main features) with the Japanese price, only worth purchasing directly from AoA to avoid import fees. At over $400 USD, about $50 per 70-minute-average film, it seemed ludicrous. And yet, it sold out in America within days of its release, the exact number sold never revealed. This signalled a huge change in the industry. AoA had proven an important fact: if a fan wants it, they will pay ANY price for it, and getting rights to a quality show allowed one to exploit that. AoA used the success of "The Garden of Sinners" to release "Madoka Magica," "Fate-Zero," "Bakemonogatari," and "Sword Art Online," each arguably the biggest anime successes of their decade, and each sold at similar premium-only price-points.If you had missed the original Blruay of "The Garden of Sinners," you might have considered the DVD-only release in 2013, priced at a more reasonable $150 USD, or twice the price of most Hollywood films on home video. While appropriate for the source, a DVD-only option seemed archaic in 2013. This too would eventually sell out. Around this time, a "standard" Japanese Bluray set was released for about $300 USD, and AoA would also offer this as an import product for the same price. It wasn't until 2018, a decade after the original film's release, that they released a domestic Bluray, for $250 USD, which I gave in for. Instead, you might try to watch the films through streaming, which has switched from paid to free across a variety of confusing platforms, but is still available as of this writing.Much of this difficulty comes at fears of reverse-importation: Bluray region locking puts Canada, USA and Japan in the same compatibility, meaning the cheap releases we get, often at less than half the price Japanese would pay, might be purchased from Japanese users using international Amazon shipping. Other countries are a bit more lucky. France and Germany received more attractive special editions at better prices, complete with a dub in their native language! For an English release, the UK would get an identical copy of the American DVD release, but in a different region code, it can easily be had for less than half the American's retail price. These countries are out of luck if they want the final films (9) and 10)), as only Japan and America got a release; however, the Japanese one has no subtitles, allowing the American version to openly charge HIGHER than Japan's, and with less bonus content.While Aniplex of America puts their releases in special premium boxes, I often find them to be of inferior quality to any other major (and more reasonably priced) anime distribtor in the USA. I strongly believe the entire America branch of Aniplex consists of two people in a small office, hand-packing English-translation booklets to Japanese-produced discs. As for my copy of "The Garden of Sinners?" Despite being "domestic," I was surprised to find the discs have English and Japanese subtitles, with all subtitles turned off by default, identical to the Japanese release, complete with the unfixed occasional written-English grammatical error (several in film 5)). While some purists will be happier with this, it is further proof to me that the company doesn't care about their interntational customers. And they can get away with it. Because this is "The Garden of Sinners," and is worth any price. But at barely above DVD quality, I have absolutely no qualms recommending a $30 Malaysian bootleg from Ebay to desparate fans. In part because of its release practices, as well as the adult subject matter and complexity of its ideas, "The Garden of Sinners" is a very exclusive property. It adds to the mystique behind it, making curious viewers even more interested to seek it out after they've heard of it. Many won't like it, finding it too dry or dark or confusing for their tastes. But all this wouldn't be possible if it wasn't good. And "The Garden of Sinners" is beyond simply "good." Even if it isn't quite perfect, it's too damn close to ignore.